Q&A: The Right Way to Confront Someone & Dealing with Unanswered Prayers

We take a listener’s question on handling being wronged and walk through a clear, biblical, and practical path for healthy confrontation. We show how to start private dialogue, bring wise mediators when needed, and aim for reconciliation while keeping boundaries and perspective.

• seeking first to understand before making claims
• confronting the person directly and privately
• using calm, unbiased mediation if private talks fail
• setting distance and boundaries when repair stalls
• holding reconciliation as the goal while honoring timing
• trusting prayer even when outcomes differ
• choosing to change the situation or your perspective
• community updates and an open invite to gather

Transcript

Live Q&A Goes Online

Josh 0:00

Hey, how's it going? It's Josh, and you guys don't normally get to see this because usually every last Wednesday of the month, we have a live QA session at 6 p.m. where people throughout the month, as service is going on, they can text in questions during the sermon that we answer in a QA. Now, this month we decided to do it different. We're gonna do it online, so here it goes. You guys ready? The question was this in reading today's devotional, when someone wrongs you, I get the not lambasting them. However, could healthy confrontations be an option? I find that airing your issue in a way that creates dialogue between parties helps both sides to understand differing perspectives. What one viewed as a problem, the other could be completely oblivious to the issue that was created by their own actions or words. Secondly, if a conversation is needed, how do you, who, what, where, when, how, do it? And lastly, how do you let things go even if it feels like prayer doesn't help and no resolution appears to be on the horizon? Alright, so a lot of stuff in there that we're just gonna kind of go through best we can. Um a lot of good questions and and a lot of questions that we really should be challenging ourselves with. Um, number one, right? Should we ever get to a point where we are confronting one another? Um, yes, we absolutely should. Uh there's plenty of biblical evidence to show that. Uh we just have to be mindful of what we're confronting one another with. In fact, I think this is a skill that honestly is sadly almost not available anymore, where now it's just like an all-out attack. Um, and and so I would start with remembering uh Stephen Covey wrote a book a while ago called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And in it, what he talked about was seek first to understand. And if we would do that, if we would really like go to someone and go, hey, I'm having an issue with you, I really want to understand what happened, I think we would be able to move through confrontation because we're gonna have conflict. I mean, husbands and wives, even in good marriages, have conflicts with one another. You're two different people from two different backgrounds who see the world through two different lenses. It's gonna happen. There's a healthy way to do it and a right way to do it, and then a wrong way. So, first things first, should we? Yes. In Galatians 2, we see Paul is talking about his time when he was with Peter. And and before some people came, Peter was eating with the Gentiles, was just having a good old time there in Antioch. And when certain people from the from Jerusalem show up, Peter all of a sudden acts like he doesn't know the Gentiles. And and Paul in Galatians 2 is talking about this, and he goes, and I opposed Peter to his face. That's that's number one. If we're gonna have a dialogue with someone, it needs to be the person that we need to have the dialogue with. We don't need to go around and tell everyone else everything that's going on. We need to go to that person, which leads me into the second question you had, which was the who, what, where, when, why, how do we do this? Matthew 18 really gives us the perfect example of how to do this. If someone wrongs you, first and foremost, you're to go to them in private. In other words, you don't jump on social media, you don't start talking to everybody else about the problem, you don't like exacerbate it and make it that much worse, you go to that person and you go, hey, can I talk to you? Simple as that. Now, does that always work? No, it doesn't. And that's why the next thing in Matthew 18 was after I've gone to them in private to their face, I if if they fail to listen, you bring two or three people with you. Now, it's not bring two or three people with you so you can jump them. It's get two or three people that you know are calm, level-headed, wise, all of that kind of stuff to kind of mediate between you two. And then that's when you sit here and go, okay, like let's all talk about this. Let's get it all out in the open with other people who are unbiased in the situation. And then in if that still doesn't work, and there will be times where that doesn't work, well, then it says that we are to cut that person off. At that point, we do need to realize, hey, we're not at this point going to be able to continue this. Now, in for in 1 Corinthians, it tells us, again, our goal uh might might be 2 Corinthians. Hang on. Because we have these magical inventions now called the internet, so we can actually look this up, right? And what we're gonna look up is what our goal should always be as far as it depends on us. If I can spell. Which I cannot. So I was wrong. In 2 Corinthians 5, right, Paul is talking about that we are given the ministry of reconciliation. That should always be our goal, to reconcile, to come back together, right? However, right now may not be the time for us to do that. We may have to take a separation and kind of put some distance, and then at a later date, when we are less emotional about what we are feeling, then we can come back together. So that's the who, what, where, when, how, should we do. Yes. And then the last question was what do we do if if it doesn't even seem prayer is working? Well, one, prayer is always working. It may not be having the same outcome that we desire, but prayer is always working. Um, God is always listening, his word does not return void. It just may not be what we thought it should be. At that point, there are two things we can do in any situation. There are only two things we can do in any situation. You can change the situation, like physically change. So the example I can give is if you don't like your job, you could always get a new one, right? And number two, you could change the way you perceive the situation. Again, going back to you don't like my job, right? Or I don't like my job. So I could always change my job and change the situation, or I could sit back and go, well, hold on, I can't just change my job. Let me change how I perceive it. Hey, this job is allowing me, regardless of whether I like it or not, it's allowing me the opportunity to have money for food and electricity and rent and a car and all of these things, and all of a sudden I'm looking at it differently. And sometimes we have to do one of those two things. When we're looking down the horizon and we're like, hey, I don't see an answer to this coming, I get that. And sometimes it feels like that answer could be far away away. Maybe we need to change how we're viewing it then. Maybe we need to change what our desired outcome would be. Maybe we need to just change the situation. And without knowing like specifics, that is the best piece of advice I could give you on that. So that was our QA for this week. Um, as always, you can always continue if you are part of Mission Scent on Sundays at 9 a.m. at 8:40 Del Tono Boulevard to send your questions in. And remember, the last Monday of every month, or the last Wednesday, I'm sorry, of every month, we answer those questions. So until then, if you've made it this far, huge, huge thing. You ready? Saturday, this Saturday at 4 p.m., free barbecue. Free barbecue. If someone's already invited you and they go to Mission Sent and they told you they're paying for it, they did help pay for it. They're not lying, but it's free to you. So come out, enjoy. There's gonna be raffle prizes, there's gonna be live music, there's gonna be games, it's gonna be free for the whole community because we just love you guys. All right. So, Mission Sent, we love you, we thank you, and we can't do this without you.